Homeless Tents in San Francisco Down By 60% According To New City Count

The City and County of San Francisco announced on Thursday that the number of homeless tents in the city fell by 60% since the last count in July 2023, marking the fewest number of tents in the city since 2018.

According to city officials, the count conducted earlier this month found only 242 tents and other homeless made structures in the city, compared to the 609 found in July 2023. When broken down, the number of encampments also fell, with encampments of 5 or more tents and structures going from 14 in 2023 to 5 this month. In addition, the number of homeless occupied vehicles parked on the side of city streets also fell from 1,058 in July 2023 to 458 in the October 2024 count.

The city remarked that the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling, which said that local laws limiting encampments on public land does not amount to cruel and unusual punishment, allowing for local civil and criminal penalties, was the main driving factor behind the sudden downswing in tents, encampments, and occupied cars. Since it came into effect this summer, the city has followed suit with a slew of new laws combatting homelessness, including a major expansion of their homeless busing program, a new homeless RV towing measure, major encampment crackdowns, and the growth of the number of outreach teams. According to the city, there have been over 3,000 engagements with homeless people since August 1st, with 365 accepting shelter, 296 being either cited or arrested, and 25 transferred to emergency medical services.

“Every day our City workers are out in San Francisco offering help, bringing people indoors, and cleaning up our neighborhoods and we are seeing the results,” said Mayor London Breed on Thursday. “We are a compassionate City that leads with services, but we also will continue to enforce our laws when those offers are rejected. This latest count shows we are making progress, and we will not let up as we continue to move people into shelter and housing and improve the conditions of our neighborhoods.”

San Francisco Department of Emergency Management (DEM) Executive Director Mary Ellen Carroll added that “I am proud of our coordinated operations to address encampments, which bring people indoors into shelter, housing, and other services every day. Under the coordination of DEM leadership, dedicated staff from the Departments of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Public Health, Public Works, SFMTA, and the San Francisco Police Department work to connect people experiencing homelessness with services while ensuring public rights of way remain clean and safe. This work is essential to reducing the devastating health impacts of unsheltered homelessness in San Francisco, which continues to decline due to a balanced approach of services and enforcement.”

The Mayoral race coincidence

However, many have noted that many of those programs date to before the August 1st date and coincide with the San Francisco Mayoral race heating up since the spring. As she had been widely criticized for a growing homeless population, a skyrocketing crime and public safety problem, and a worsening tent situation since first coming into office in 2018, opponents such as former Mayor Mark Farrell and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie have gone after her on the issues. Homelessness in particular has been an engaging issue, with Farrell making huge gains in the race for wanting more crackdowns on crime and homelessness.

As a result, Breed has pushed for more and more measures against homelessness in the past several months to get numbers down. Her busing program has been a particular recent highlight, with her releasing preliminary figures shortly after a poll showing she was down. And on Thursday, with Breed still struggling in the race, a new quarterly update was released showing a drastic decline in homeless tents and occupied cars – the culmination of the last 3 months worth of new homeless initiatives.

“Farrell and Lurie were, and still are, going after Breed for more sweeps, more housing, and that sort of thing,” political advisor Sharon Lee told the Globe Thursday. “And Breed really stepped up once polling showed that she may not win the Mayoral race. Grants Pass was just a good excuse for her to really push things further, especially with all the crackdowns. And look what she got today: hard data showing that homelessness in San Francisco is really going down. Well, at the very least, the number of tents and cars. That’s something she can really push in the final few weeks. Clean city statistics.

“Everyone knew when the quarterly figures would come out and when by-mail ballots would be sent out, and these actions had to started during the summer to be reflected by the October 2nd count date. It worked. All the sudden, a 60% drop. For voters, that looks good. But dig a little bit, and you can see how orchestrated all of this was, all around the Grants Pass guise. You know ‘We had to do it because of the Grants Pass ruling!’ Breed needs that October swing in support, and she may have gotten it with this.”

Final polling for the San Francisco Mayoral race is expected to be conducted and released later this month.